


Sectumsempra

by lq_traintracks (lumosed_quill), traintracks



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-07 02:21:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1114378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lumosed_quill/pseuds/lq_traintracks, https://archiveofourown.org/users/traintracks/pseuds/traintracks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After he curses Draco, Harry has trouble moving past what he's done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sectumsempra

 

No one knew how those words had tasted. When Ginny kissed him for the first time, those words were still there. Hiding the book couldn't undo them.

They were the cool iron taste of his blood.

They were a snake's shed skin.

And yet he could not be rid of them. He could not retract them. He couldn't unsee the slash marks, the spread of blood diluting in water. Could never unhear the sounds he made – there on the wet ground, in agony.

Harry had caused agony. And Ginny had kissed him like he was some knight. Some real man. Her tongue over his, the words there, still whispering in his mouth.

He couldn't sleep that night for the sounds echoing around him. The movement of the bed curtains were the ripping of his shirt. His own breath rattled like Malfoy's had. Harry threw off his blankets, donned his glasses, and tiptoed to his trunk.

When he got to the hospital wing, he stopped. He almost turned and went back to bed, back to a sleepless, awful night. Back to life: writing essays, playing Quidditch. He wanted, standing there under his invisibility cloak in the drafty hall, to ignore what he had done. He did not want to add it to the growing list of horrors in his life.

He did not want to feel guilt for the very person who had cursed Katie Bell, who had meant to curse Dumbledore, who he'd loathed since the moment they'd met. Whose hand he would never shake. Not ever. And yet he did feel guilt. He couldn't seem to stop. It grew malignant inside him.

_Sectumsempra._

Harry opened the door and slipped inside.

Madam Pomfrey was going over parchments in her office, her sleepy quill hardly moving. Harry kept an eye on her as he crept past.

Then she was out of view, and he turned to the room, the moonlight slanting over the empty beds.

One bed was not empty.

Harry came to stand beside it.

In sleep, Draco Malfoy looked utterly unthreatening. He looked like a boy sleeping. Yet still there was that slight downturn of the mouth – that furrow at the brow. Something weighing on him, some lingering pain.

The pain Harry had given him?

Something else. Both. All of it. His chosen life.

Harry wanted to pull back the pristine covers and see for himself. Would there still be marks? Would they be pink-red and vulnerable? Would they scar? Harry let the invisibility cloak slip from his shoulders. He reached out a hand and then withdrew it. He reached out again, closed his fingers on the sheet, and drew it down off Malfoy's chest.

Dittany-treated bandages crossed his body. Malfoy's skin was a bloodless white. (There had been so much blood. He bled like anyone would. He was fragile.) Malfoy's arms were thin but not feeble. Harry had never seen his arms like this: the slender muscle under porcelain skin, gooseflesh rising to the cool air. One dark nipple peeked over the bandaging.

_Sectumsempra._

Harry reached out, one finger, and traced the edge of a bandage. The rough cotton meeting surprisingly warm skin. Harry could see Malfoy's heart beating, the stubborn music under his knitted bones, the ordinariness of him.

Malfoy stirred and blinked open his eyes. Harry did not move, did not run, did not speak. Nothing. He looked down at Malfoy and watched him comprehend his presence, the fear, and then the terrible hatred trying to cover it.

Malfoy's voice was frail like his naked body. "Come to get off on it, P-potter?"

Harry realized his finger still touched Malfoy's skin, had been tracing the jut of a rib. He snatched his hand away.

"I don't have a wand," Malfoy taunted, his voice quavering and quiet. One yell would have done it – would have brought Pomfrey, Filch, Snape…. Malfoy didn't yell. As though this were a point of honor. Or as though the fear itself was too great.

Malfoy feared him.

_Sectumsempra._

"Going to give it another go, are you?" Malfoy went on, the shaking becoming worse. "Going to bleed me dry this time?"

Harry stood, speechless. His finger could still feel the heat of Malfoy's skin, the life of it. "Please," Harry heard himself say. He licked his lips. "Whatever you're doing, Draco. Please stop."

Malfoy inhaled slowly, treating Harry like a predator, a snake vacillating on whether or not to strike. He made no sudden moves. Harry could see the shock written all over him – the desire to flee.

"Please just stop," Harry whispered.

_Sectrumsempra. For enemies._

Malfoy spat, "You don't know what you're—"

"I'm sorry."

The silence in the room, between them, after he said it, was monstrous. It was Harry, now, who trembled.

Madam Pomfrey's chair made a noise. Her shoes scuffed along the floor.

Harry grabbed up the cloak once more. He slung it around his body, breathing fast. Madam Pomfrey's door was opening. Harry reached out and pulled Malfoy's sheet up over his heaving chest.

"I'm sorry for this," Harry whispered, watching the fear and sadness transfigure Malfoy's features, raise a cool sweat along his brow, over his lip. He looked just as he had in that bathroom, when Harry had found him, before he'd—

_Sectumsempra._

"I'm sorry."

Harry backed away from the bed as Madam Pomfrey turned the corner. He edged away from her and slipped out the door as she came up to Malfoy's bedside asking if he'd had a nightmare.

Harry closed the door to the hospital wing quietly. Then he leaned his forehead against it and breathed, trying to slow his pulse, his thoughts.

He swallowed against the knot in his throat. The words were almost gone. Almost. And what replaced them, Harry could not, would not, name.

 


End file.
